Autumn Falling

Usually, when you invite your friends over for dinner, on an innocent Saturday evening, you don’t expect it all to end with fire engines and ambulances outside of your home.  You don’t expect to see the neon blue lights of the emergency vehicles reflect onto the faux gothic stone work of the church opposite.  You don’t expect it to happen, but it does.

And at other times, you don’t expect a Sunday afternoon to end with the sight of an old woman falling on the pavement right in front of you.  Her leg bursts open silently and her blood decants down the slope of her shin, like watered down cranberry juice.  She looks at you directly, because you remind her of her niece in Arizona, but her lips have turned blue and she’s afraid.  You don’t expect it to happen, but it does.

And usually, when your friend from Eritrea, (let’s pretend she’s from Eritrea), calls you up on a Monday, and invites you out for tea, you don’t expect her to ask you to buy a small pill on the internet, which will take the fertilised egg away from her body.  You don’t expect it to happen, but it does.

You purchase the pill and you watch it travel north from Mumbai towards the small post office in East Wall, through the tracking device on DHL. On the day you go to collect it, the woman there says “mild weather for this time of year” and you smile.  You sit on the bench nearby and hold the package in front of you, and wonder if you’re both plunging into harm’s way.

But your friend, let’s just still pretend she’s from Eritrea, says thank you and holds your hands tightly.  She says that this autumn is falling into place now.  She tells you that September smells the same no matter what age you are, that it smells of back-to-school leather satchels, coffee and the fragrance “Beautiful” by Estēe Lauder.  She reminds you that no one was hurt in the fire, and that the woman recovered well after her fall.  She tells you that what you are doing is not sinister or toxic, and that everything will be well with this pill.

She says everything will be well with this pill.